Scientist

NASA Astronaut

b. June 7, 1979

“There are no average days or normal days in outer space.”

Anne McClain is a former NASA astronaut and U.S. Army lieutenant colonel who served as flight engineer for Expeditions 58/59 to the International Space Station. She is the second LGBTQ person to become an American astronaut.

Born and raised in Spokane, Washington, McClain dreamed of becoming an astronaut from an early age. She graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point with a degree in mechanical and aeronautical engineering. She earned a master’s degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Bath and a master’s degree in international relations from the University of Bristol, where she was a Marshall Scholar. A competitive athlete, she played rugby for the Women’s Premiership in England and for the U.S.A. Rugby Women’s National Team.

Following her studies, McClain joined the U.S. Army as a helicopter pilot, rising through the ranks to detachment commander. She served 15 months in Operation Iraqi Freedom, flying more than 216 combat missions as pilot-in-command. In 2010 McClain was appointed commander of C Troop, 1st Battalion, 14th Aviation Regiment, responsible for the Army’s initial entry training, instructor pilot training and maintenance test pilot training in the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior. During her military service, she logged more than 2,000 flight hours in 20 different aircraft.

In 2013 McClain was selected as one of eight members of the 21^st NASA astronaut class, becoming the youngest astronaut on NASA’s roster. The selection made her the second gay American astronaut after Sally Ride and the first out active NASA astronaut. In 2015 McClain completed the rigorous candidate training process, including scientific and technical training, physiological training, intensive instruction in International Space Station systems, spacewalks and robotics, T-38 flight training, and water and wilderness survival training.

From December 2018 to June 2019, McClain served as flight engineer on NASA Expedition 58/59 to the International Space Station. The flight launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan aboard the Soyuz spacecraft. McClain was one of three crew members on the expedition, along with Canadian David Saint-Jacques and Russian Oleg Kononenko. McClain and the crew contributed to hundreds of experiments in biology, biotechnology, physical science and earth science, including investigations into small devices that replicate the structure and function of human organs, editing DNA in space for the first time, and recycling 3D-printed material. McClain conducted two spacewalks totaling 13 hours and 8 minutes. She returned to earth after spending 204 days in space.

McClain resides in Houston, Texas. She has a six-year-old son, Briggs.

Father of Ecology

b. September 14, 1769
d. May 6, 1859

“The most dangerous worldview is ... of those who have not viewed the world.”

Alexander von Humboldt was a renowned Prussian naturalist, explorer, and geographer, and the preeminent scientist of his time. Regarded as the father of ecology, he laid the foundations for modern biogeography and meteorology and shaped the concept of climate zones, weather forecasting and the theory of man-made climate change.

Von Humboldt was born into a wealthy Prussian family. In 1791, as a compromise between his mother’s desire for him to become a civil servant and his own interest in science and geology, he enrolled at the Mining Academy at Freiburg. As a mining inspector, he investigated the effect of light exposure on wildlife, collected thousands of botanical specimens and invented a breathing mask.

The death of his mother and his inheritance in 1796 enabled von Humboldt to fulfill his dream of traveling the world. Along with Aimé Bon­pland, a botanist, he explored Latin America for five years. He landed in modern-day Venezuela, where he traversed rainforests, crossed the Orinoco River and ascended the Andes mountains. He suffered intense cold, braved earthquakes and conducted life-threatening experiments with electrical eels. He returned with notebooks full of geological and meteorological observations and more than 60,000 plant specimens.

At Venezuela’s Lake Valencia, von Humboldt first developed the idea of human-induced climate change. He was the first to describe the fundamental impact of the forest on ecosystems and climate. On Mount Chimborazo, von Humboldt had an epiphany: he reasoned that the world was a single, interconnected organism. His view that ecosystems were intrinsically linked contrasted with previous scientific classifications of the earth and transformed the way scientists viewed nature.

Von Humboldt’s published works on nature made a far-reaching, interdisciplinary impact on major 20th and 21st century thinkers. His concepts inspired the young Charles Darwin to travel and informed his ideas on natural selection. Von Humboldt’s views prompted the revolutionary Simón Bolívar to assert that they had awakened the South American people to take pride in their continent. Von Humboldt influenced great writers such as Goethe, Whitman and Poe, and provided the scientific undergirding upon which modern environmentalists—from George Perkins Marsh to John Muir—built their ideas.

Von Humboldt’s personal life contrasted with his public celebrity. He held intense feelings for a series of male friends but struggled with loneliness. Contemporaries noted von Humboldt’s lack of love for women, and a newspaper article insinuated that he was a homosexual.

Von Humboldt died in Berlin, Germany, the city where he was born. He was 89.

Israeli Gay Pioneer and Scientist

b. October 18, 1940

“You no longer have to be ashamed. You can even be elected.”

A pioneering advocate for LGBT rights in Israel, Uzi Even became the first openly gay member of the country’s parliament, the Knesset, in 2002. He is a professor emeritus of physical chemistry at Tel Aviv University, from which he earned a Ph.D. in physics and molecular chemistry. 

Even worked for the Israeli army at the Nuclear Research Center. When the Israel Defense Forces discovered he was gay, Even was stripped of his security clearance and his rank as a lieutenant colonel. His testimony about the matter led Yitzhak Rabin’s government to change the law in 1993, thus allowing open homosexuals to serve in any position in the armed forces. The same year, under President Bill Clinton, the U.S. Department of Defense issued "Don't Ask Don't Tell," which remained official military policy until 2011.

Even first ran for a seat in the Knesset in 1999. He lost, but in 2002 was appointed to a vacant seat. During his tenure in parliament, he helped to advance LGBT rights and brought attention to important social issues related to the gay movement. 

Even also helped to advance same-sex spousal protection on the university level, advocating for health care coverage for his partner. He brought same-sex adoption into the spotlight when he and his partner became the first gay couple in Israel to legally adopt (by then) their 30-year-old foster son—a young man who had been kicked out of his home at 16 for being gay. “We opened a door, … a window for others,” said Even’s son, Yossi Even-Kama, “an opening of hope for the couples that will follow.”

In 2006 Even joined the Labor Party in hopes of further advancing LGBT rights. “As a community, it is important that we be involved in a major party,” he said. 

Six years later, Even set another legal precedent when he divorced his partner, whom he married in Canada in 2004. Because the Rabbinical Court does not recognize same-sex marriage, the divorce was granted in Family Court, paving the way for both straight and gay couples to bypass religious law in marriage matters. 

Even hopes his coming out and public advocacy on behalf of LGBT people will inspire others to do the same. “It’s a symbolic act,” he said. “I’m the one breaking the glass ceiling.” 

LGBT rights in Israel are the most advanced in the Middle East. Israel is the only Middle Eastern country to recognize same-sex marriage.

Biologist and AIDS Activist

b. May 12, 1934
d. February 13, 1994

“We are everywhere.” 

Bruce Raymond Voeller was a biologist and AIDS researcher who became a leading gay rights activist. He cofounded the National Gay Task Force and served as its executive director for five years. He helped lead the early fight against AIDS and founded the Mariposa Education and Research Foundation. 

Born in Minneapolis, Voeller first confronted his homosexuality as a student. His school counselor assured him that he was not gay, but Voeller had felt same-sex attraction very early in life, which inspired his interest in biology.

Voeller graduated with honors from Reed College in 1956, winning a five-year fellowship at the Rockefeller Institute to complete his doctoral studies in biochemistry, developmental biology and genetics. He became a research associate at the Institute in 1961, and later a professor. He wrote four books and married a woman, with whom he had three children. 

Voeller came out when he was 29 and divorced in 1971. In 1972 he was among a group that took over George McGovern’s New York campaign office to protest the senator’s opposition to gay rights. Voeller outlined a six-point statement before he was arrested while chanting “gay power.”

Voeller went on to become president of the New York Gay Activist Alliance. He founded the National Gay Task Force in 1973 (now the National LGBTQ Task Force), which became the first gay rights group to meet at the White House to discuss policy related to gay and lesbian Americans. 

Voeller conducted pioneering HIV/AIDS research before the disease had a name. He co-edited “AIDS and Sex: An Integrated Biomedical and Behavioral Approach” in 1990 and wrote scores of papers on the subject. He also worked at Hunter College and Cornell University doing research on the effectiveness of condoms and spermicides in preventing disease. 

In 1978, with Karen DeCrow of the National Organization of Women and Aryeh Neier of the American Civil Liberties Union, Voeller founded the Mariposa Foundation to study human sexuality and sexually transmitted diseases. Volunteers for the organization preserved important historical resources of the gay rights movement, which have become an archive on human sexuality at the Cornell University Library. 

While with Mariposa, Voeller commissioned the famous George Segal sculpture of gay couples at Christopher Park, across the street from the site of the Stonewall riot. He also commissioned Dom Bachardy to create a series of portraits of Gay Pioneers, including Frank Kameny, Phyllis Lyon, Del Martin, Barbara Gittings and others.

Voeller died from complications of AIDS in 1994. His longtime companion, Richard Liuck, a former associate at the Mariposa Foundation, died the same year from an AIDS-related illness.

Neurologist and Author

b. July 9, 1933
d. August 30, 2015

“We speak not only to tell other people what we think, but to tell ourselves what we think.”

Oliver Sacks was a British-born physician and best-selling author who specialized in neurology. He spent most of his professional life in the United States. The New York Times called him “the poet laureate of medicine.” 

Sacks came from a long line of scientists. His father was a physician and his mother was one of the first female surgeons in England. Sacks’s first autobiography, “Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood,” chronicles his early experiences escaping the Blitz during World War II and being enrolled at a cruel boarding school. 

Sacks graduated in 1956 from Queen’s College, Oxford, with a degree in biology and physiology. He came to the United States in the 1960s to complete a residency at Mt. Zion Hospital in San Francisco. He pursued fellowships in neurology and psychiatry at UCLA. As part of his 2012 book, “Hallucinations,” he discussed his experimentation with recreational drugs and its effects on his brain.

After moving to New York City, Sacks began documenting his observations about neurological diseases, which led to his book “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.” His treatment of patients suffering from a rare illness became the basis of “Awakenings,” which was adapted into a 1990 Academy Award-nominated film starring Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro. His book “Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain” also inspired a film, “Musical Minds,” on the PBS series “Nova.” Sacks created the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function, where he served as a medical adviser. 

Sacks regularly contributed to The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books and The London Review of Books, as well as many medical publications. The recipient of numerous honors, he became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1996 and was named a Fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences in 1999. He was awarded a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to literature in 2008. 

Sacks lived alone for most of his life. He spoke about being gay for the first time in his 2015 autobiography, “On the Move: A Life.” He said he was celibate for 35 years before beginning a long-term relationship with writer Bill Hayes in 2008. “It has sometimes seemed to me that I have lived at a certain distance from life,” he wrote. “This changed when Billy and I fell in love.” They were together until his death.

Sacks wrote about his uveal melanoma, which affects the eye, in his 2010 book, “The Mind’s Eye.” When in 2014 the cancer returned in his liver and brain, he announced it in The New York Times. He died at age 82.

Artist/Inventor/Scientist

b. April 15, 1452
d. May 2, 1519

"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." 
    
Leonardo Da Vinci was the archetypal Renaissance man. His curiosity and genius led him to make observations, experiments and breakthroughs in a variety of fields including engineering, architecture, math, anatomy, optics, astronomy, geology, biology and philosophy. His artwork and inventions, many of them advanced far beyond innovations of the time period, continue to earn him wide acclaim.

Artist Andrea del Verrocchio hired Da Vinci, at age 15, as his apprentice. While working with Verrocchio in Florence, Da Vinci learned a broad range of skills including painting, sculpting and drafting.

In 1472, he was accepted into the painters' guild in Florence. Da Vinci lived mostly in Florence and Milan for the rest of his career while working on commissioned art. "Mona Lisa," "The Last Supper" and "Madonna of the Rocks" are a few of his most famous paintings.

Da Vinci left behind a collection of 40 notebooks, of which 31 still remain. He filled these notebooks with diagrams and records of his observations and research in the fields of painting, architecture, mechanics, human anatomy, geophysics, botany, hydrology and aerology.

Da Vinci's documents demonstrate that he conceptualized helicopters, tanks and calculators long before construction of these devices became feasible. He also envisioned solar power and developed a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics.

Da Vinci's professions included civil engineer, musician, military planner and weapons designer. He worked as the court artist for the Duke of Milan.

He developed a close relationship with Niccolò Machiavelli and mathematician Luca Pacioli, with whom he helped write "Divina Proportione" (1509).
No evidence suggests that Da Vinci had relationships with women. His closest relationships were with two of his male pupils, Melzi and Salai.

Scientist

b. May 19, 1966

"Hopefully people can look at me and realize that it's okay to be open in their lives and be themselves and do great work and make contributions to the world as scientist." 
    
Carolyn Bertozzi is the youngest scientist to receive the MacArthur "genius" award. A Professor of Chemistry and Molecular Biology at Berkeley, she oversees a cutting edge research lab. She has a reputation as an outstanding professor and mentor.

The daughter of a physics professor, Bertozzi worked summer jobs at MIT. Her early interests included sports and music.

Bertozzi found her niche in organic chemistry during her sophomore year at Harvard University. She graduated summa cum laude and received an award for best senior thesis. She completed her graduate studies at University of California, Berkeley, receiving her Ph.D. in 1993.

In 1996, Bertozzi joined the UC Berkeley faculty. Her research focuses on the glycobiology underlying diseases such as cancer and inflammatory disorders. Believing she can link sugar molecules' structures with the presence or absence of disease, Bertozzi developed a unique system to track cell development.

Her research team has published over 98 articles. Nature and Angewandte Chemie, an influential chemistry journal, has praised Bertozzi's work.
She co-edited "Glycochemistry: Principles, Synthesis, and Applications" and is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.

In 2001, UC Berkeley honored Bertozzi with its prestigious Distinguished Teaching Award.

Gay Pioneer

b. May 21, 1925
d. October 11, 2011

“The momentum is there, and that’s not going to be stopped. It’s moved from hopes of a grassroots movement to the actuality of a grassroots movement.”

Frank Kameny was the chief strategist and father of the LGBT civil rights movement. The nonviolence of black civil rights organizers Bayard Rustin and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. influenced his methods.

A World War II veteran with a Ph.D. from Harvard University, Kameny worked as an astronomer for the Army Map Service. In 1957 he was fired for being gay. By executive order of President Eisenhower in 1953, gays and lesbians were prohibited from serving as federal employees.

Kameny’s termination fueled a lifetime of activism. He fought his dismissal in the federal courts, and in 1961 he filed the first gay rights appeal to the US Supreme Court. The same year, Kameny cofounded the Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C., with Jack Nichols. The Mattachine Societies of New York and Washington became the first gay civil liberties organizations in the United States. Later Kameny helped start organizations that would become the National LGBTQ Task Force and the Human Rights Campaign.

Kameny, along with Craig Rodwell, took the lead in organizing the Annual Reminders—the first public demonstrations for gay equality. Held each Fourth of July from 1965 to 1969 in front of Independence Hall (which then housed the Liberty Bell), the protests paved the way for the Stonewall riot in 1969. Kameny and fellow Gay Pioneer Barbara Gittings enlisted activists from New York, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia to participate. At the first Annual Reminder, 40 brave gay and lesbian picketers carried signs demanding equality. By 1969 their numbers had more than tripled. Inspired by Stokely Carmichael’s “Black Is Beautiful,” Kameny coined the movement’s slogan, “Gay Is Good,” during this period.

After 1969, Kameny, Gittings and others suspended the Annual Reminders to marshal support for a 1970 march commemorating the first anniversary of Stonewall. Proceeding from Greenwich Village to Central Park, it is remembered as the first New York City Pride Parade.

With Gittings, Kameny waged a multi-year campaign against the American Psychiatric Association (APA) for its classification of homosexuality as a mental illness. In 1970 Kameny led members of the Gay Liberation Front and Gay Activists Alliance in a demonstration at the annual meeting of the APA. The next year, Kameny, Gittings and fellow agitators stormed the meeting and Kameny seized the microphone, demanding to be heard. For the APA’s annual meeting in 1972, Kameny and Gittings organized a panel on homosexuality. When no gay psychiatrist would openly serve on it for fear of professional repercussions, Gittings recruited Dr. H. Anonymous (John E. Fryer, M.D.), who appeared masked and using a voice modulator. The three of them asserted that the disease was not homosexuality, but toxic homophobia. Consequently, the APA formed a committee to determine whether there was scientific evidence to support its conclusion.

In 1973, with Kameny and Gittings present by invitation, the APA announced the declassification of homosexuality as a mental illness. Kameny described it as the day “we were cured en masse by the psychiatrists.” At the time, the “cures” for homosexuality included electric shock therapy, institutionalization and lobotomy. With the APA's decision, the gay rights movement was no longer encumbered by the label of mental illness and its consequences.

In 1975 the US Civil Service Commission lifted its ban on gay employees, a victory Kameny pursued relentlessly for nearly two decades. Two years later, he became the first openly gay candidate to run for Congress.

Kameny appeared in “Gay Pioneers,” a documentary co-produced by WHYY/PBS and Equality Forum about the Annual Reminders.  In 2006 the APA presented Kameny (and Gittings) with the organization's first annual civil rights award, named in memory of Dr. John Fryer. In 2007 the Washington City Council honored Kameny as a “true freedom fighter,” and in 2009 he received a formal apology for his dismissal from the Army Map Service.

Kameny was invited to witness the signing of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act, and President Obama lauded him for his seminal efforts. As far back as the 1970s, Kameny was chipping away at the ban on gays in the military. He counseled countless potential gay inductees, closeted service members, and gay military facing discharge for their sexual orientation, and assisted scores of gays encountering problems getting or keeping security clearances.

The Library of Congress has incorporated more than 70,000 letters, documents and memorabilia from Frank Kameny’s vast personal archives into its permanent collection. A dozen of his handmade picket signs reside in the National Museum of American History of the Smithsonian Institution. Kameny’s Washington, D.C., home is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

“Gay Is Good: The Life and Letters of Gay Rights Pioneer Franklin Kameny” (2015), edited by Michael G. Long, showcases a selection of Kameny’s searing missives, which took to task politicians, pundits, journalists and other high-profile figures.

Frank Kameny was celebrated during LGBT History Month 2014.

Read the tribute to Frank Kameny delivered at the National LGBT 50th Anniversary Ceremony, July 4, 2015.

National Hero

b. May 26, 1951

d. July 23, 2012 

“Young girls need to see role models. You can’t be what you can’t see.” 

Sally Ride was the first female American astronaut in space. 

Born in Los Angeles, Ride excelled in science and sports. She was a nationally ranked junior tennis player and earned a tennis scholarship to a private high school. While playing in college, she got the attention of Billie Jean King, who encouraged Ride to play professionally. Ride decided to finish her education. 

Ride earned a master’s degree and a doctorate in physics from Stanford. She responded to a NASA recruiting ad and was one of 35 people—including six women— chosen from more than 8,000 applicants. 

Ride was selected as a mission specialist aboard the space shuttle Challenger. On June 18, 1983, she became the first American woman in space. She later became the only person to serve on the presidential commissions investigating both of the nation’s space shuttle tragedies—the Challenger explosion (1986) and the Columbia disaster (2003). 

In 1987, Ride retired from NASA and became a science fellow at the Center for International Security and Arms Control at Stanford. In 1989, she joined the faculty at the University of California, San Diego as a professor of physics and director of the California Space Institute. In 2001, she founded Sally Ride Science, which motivates girls and boys to study science and explore careers in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).

Ride co-authored several books about space and about climate change with Tam O’Shaughnessy, her life partner of 27 years.

In 2013, President Barack Obama awarded Ride a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom.